A very useful resource which I need to consult, say, twice a year is master journal list of Thomson Reuters Scientific. This morning it was actully a colleage who needed this resource. Actually he wanted to know the journals covered by Web of Science. So he needed a subset of the Master Journal List. I knew that existsed but where?
Using Google we ended up on this version of the Master Journal List. Not the one I really wanted since it did not have the datase specific lists. I knew it existed but where? Only a couple of hours later, by approaching the site from a different angle, navigating around a wee bit more different I found the version of the Master Journal List, the version we were actually looking for.
Looking carefully I finally see that the first one is a more extensive journal search form of the Master Journal List. But that you can only find out after you’ve found the second website. You can navigate from the one to the other, but not the other way around. Little bit strange. Let alone confusing.
Actually in a similar vein. Thomson has a brand new product InCites, whereas the old totally different In-Cites website/product from the same company still exists.
Last Friday Thomson Reuters released the 2008 edition of the Journal Citation Reports. This year it was announced by Thomson itself as a news release, that’s a good move from them. The number of journals reported in the two editions of the JCR have increased from 6417 in the Science edition to 6598 (181 more journals that is) and in Social Sciences edition the number of journals covered increased from 1865 to 1980 (an increase of 115 journals).It is still not the increase I expected on the basis of the addition of some 750 new regional journals which was announced last year, and that figure is now even advertised as an expansion of 1228 journals, but it is still an expansion of 300 journals. Albeit reading Thomson’s press releases on the 2008 JCR update I still notice some juggling with numbers that don’t really add, or don’t make sense after simple investigations when comparing the 2007 and 2008 issues.Now we have to go and figure out which were added, and more important, which journal were dropped. That’s always interesting to find out. It will take time though.The really major improvement Thomson should make, is to abolish the rather odd division between the two parts of the database. Currently I can’t find any arguments to stick to the demarcation lines between the Science edition and the Social Science edition of the JCR. I really wonder how many customers they have that subscribe to only one part of the JCR. I think it is fair to assume that by far most of the customers subscribe to both parts.For teaching it is just a pain, to have to explain students that they should start their search with choosing a database part. That is far from intuitive.
The predecessor of Thomson Reuters Scientific has been responsible, for years already, for publishing the good old in-cites website. Today I was alerted on a new service by the same company. Incites?! A brand new product? Incites it is.
For me a bit confusing. Even today when I go to the old incites site a arrive here In-Cites. Okay. It carries the warning that the site has effecitvely moved to ScienceWatch.com. (In the unnoticable red bar at the top of the page). Fair enough. But the sole reason for me to use that website, or refer to in-cites is the journal lists. Follow the trail to the methdology section in Sciencewatch there you find a link to the journal list. With an additional click you end up here, where is stated:
The current Journal List is located on the archived in-cites.com Web site.
So you end up at in-cites.
What’s new at in-cites? Or what marketeer has thought up an old name from the same company for a new product?
I am interested in the new product, but at the moment I find it all a bit confusing.
It is odd to say, but for researcher the journal as an entity is disappearing. Scientist search for information in online databases and select from title and abstract information whether the article suits their needs. The days that scientists visited the library and browsed the table of contents of the most important journals to keep up with their field have long gone .
Still there is a lot of emotion around journals titles. Scientist want to publish their research in the best possible journal. Earlier this year the NOWT (2008) published a report on the performance of Dutch universities and there it was clearly shown that field normalized citation impact for each university correlated positively with the field normalized journal quality.
Looking at this graph it is clear that there is considerable reason to selected the best journals in their field to publish your results. However, until recent the only widely available journal quality indicator has been the journal impact factor. There has been a lot of criticism on the uses and abuses of impact factors, but they have stood their time. All scientists are at least aware of impact factors. For years ISI, Thomson Reuters were in fact the sole gate keepers of journal quality rankings.
Over the last years a number of products, free and fee based, have tried to come up with new and competing journal ranking measures. SicmagoJR (based on Scopus data), journal analyzer from Scopus, Eigenfactor.org and the data from Thomson’s own Essential Science Indicators of course.
This week Thomson Reuters announced that they will update the journal citation report. From the 1st of February we get a entirely new Journal Citation Report. From the press release:
- Five-Year Impact Factor - provides a broader range of citation activity for a more informative snapshot over time.
- Journal “Self Citations” – An analysis of journal self citations and their contribution to the Journal Impact Factor calculation.
- Graphic Displays of Impact Factor “Box Plots” - A graphic interpretation of how a journal ranks in different categories.
- Rank-in-Category Tables for Journals Covering Multiple Disciplines - Allows a journal to be seen in the context of multiple categories at a glance rather than only a single one.
It is highly unusual to see two updates per year for JCR. But it is interesting to to note how they are moving under the pressure of some competition.
Literature:
NOWT (2008). Wetenschaps- en Technologie- Indicatoren 2008. Maastricht, Nederlands Observatorium van Wetenschap en Technologie (NOWT). http://www.nowt.nl/docs/NOWT-WTI_2008.pdf (in Dutch)
A while ago Thomson Reuters heralded their new database Thomson Innovation. One of the strong points of their new platform are the visualization tools such as the citation maps. With these tools, users can quickly analyze patents cited as references by the focal-patent, as well as those that have since cited it. An article in R&D Magazine described the tool in more detail.
This evening I found out that these citation maps have been introduced in Web of Science as well. Still in beta. But it is a nice spill over from the new Thomson Innovation platform. It allows you to browse from article to article. It is indeed visually very attractive. I have to play around with it a little more before I will fully comprehend the real advantages.
Another database that has these citation maps a little longer already is Highwire, but those I have never used seriously. See what we can learn from the comparison in the near.
Just noticed that the feature was announced in the June 2008 update of the “What’s New?” items. What I noticed there as well that you finally can use your browser back buttons on Web of Science. WoW! That’s what is called innovation.
It just popped up in my RSS feed on the second of July. The official press release from Thomson Reuters is dated July 1st, announcing the new edition of the Journal Citation Reports 2007. There is no further mention of the new journals included or excluded. There is a link to the official promotional website of JCR, which still states:
- Covers more than 7,500 of the world’s most highly cited, peer-reviewed journals in approximately 200 disciplines
- The Science Edition covers over 5,900 leading international science journals from the Thomson Reuters database
- The Social Sciences Edition covers over 1,700 leading international social sciences journals from the Thomson Reuters database
It actually struck me today that the journals included in JCR are not listed at their Master Journal List.
Shall we call it progress that Thomson is confirming what I blogged about some two weeks ago?
Last year some of our researchers asked me what had happened to the Impact Factor of the journal Water Science and Technology. In the 2005 edition it was still included in the JCR and showed an showed an increasing trend in Impact Factor. Not the top of all journals, but a good player. After correspondence with ISI (Thomson Reuters Scientific) we found out that it was indeed excluded from the JCR because it lacked the desired quality. Later I understood from one of the editors that perhaps too many conference papers caused this problem. The editors changed the editorial policies and complied with ISI to upgrade the standards. After these improvements the journal was set for inclusion in 2007 again.
Indeed the journal has appeared again in the latest edition of the JCR. A shinning IF of 1.240 which is higher than ever. For 2006 the IF has been calculated and presented in the 2007 edition as well. A wee bit low, but it is important that there is a continous set of data. But what really amazes me is the fact that when you search in de 2006 edition of the JCR you still don’t find this journal. In the 2005 edition it is there again. It strikes me as odd. Still hanging on the old idea of a paper edition.
Another pain point of me with the JCR is the strange division between the Science edition and the Social Science edition of the JCR.Today I had to check for a set of journals their impact factors. Each time you have to guess wether the journal would be included in the Science edition or the Social Science edition.
I can imagine there is a sales argument to sell either smaller set to smaller institutions. But when you subscribe to the complete set, I can’t see any reason whatsoever why we have to live with this barrier in the database. It seems a relic from times long time gone.
June is always the time to look out for the newest update of the Journal Citation Reports. Yesterday I checked and they weren’t there yet. Today the JCR was updated and included the 2007 figures.
You can leave it at that. We subscribe to this databases, and it has been updated. That’s all.
For the Journal Citation Reports which is updated only once a year that simple message will not suffice in my opinion. Only Thomson Reuters Scientific doesn’t appear to share my view. JCR is an important database. On the release of the latest figures, armies of researchers want to consult the database to see whether the journal on which editorial board they are has increased its Impact Factor. Or they use it to judge where to submit their next set of articles.
When the Essential Science Indicators are updated, once every two months. The event is accompanied with a slew of information from Thomson. When the even more popular database of JCR is updated we don’t receive any information whatsoever.
We have to find out ourselves that the coverage of journals has been expanded, growing from 6166 in the 2006 JCR Science edition to 6417 in the 2007 edition. For the JCR Social Science edition the number of journals covered increased with 97 journals to a total of 1865 journals. Which journals? We are left to guess for ourselves. Some Spanish journals they have worked out.
Thomson Reuters Scientific knows, but they haven’t told us (yet). Some journals have been dropped from the list. We only have to find out ourselves which ones. The increase in journals this year is only a prelude to the increase which we might expect next year since they have included some 700 new regional journals in Web of Science.
I might be mistaken, but at first sight there must be some interesting news worthy facts in the yearly update of JCR. Worthy of informing at least your subscribing librarians, who can on their turn inform their users. We want to inform our users on these events. We are more than willing to promote your products. Thomson, you can facilitate this work a whole lot better, but you should inform us a whole lot better than this.
It was only at the beginning of April that Thomson announced their increased coverage of journals in the social sciences. I should have read the press announcement much more carefully since it clearly states “begins expansion of Web of Science” in the title. A few days ago they added yet another substantial -700- set of journals. This is likely to include those 162 journals announced in April. We don’t know for sure.
Digging a little further on the Thomson Scientific Website I notice they still mention “from approximately 8,500 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world“. I thought WoS already covered some 9000 journals for quite some time already, but that is based on oral communication in presentations by Thomson staff. On checking the Journal Master Lists from Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index and looking at the journal changes over the past 12 months I only count 177 journal changes over all three database parts. These journal changes also include name changes, dropped journals et cetera. We are still left in the dark on which journals have been added.
Dear Thomson Reuters Scientific executives, we want to go out into the faculties of our universities, the departments and laboratories and meet with researchers and tell them this exciting news. However we want to inform our users completely and we need therefore comprehensive lists of the journals that have been added. Is that really too much asked?
So, James Testa finally found his 500 journals.
Hattip: de Bibliotheker
Thomson Scientific published a press release yesterday in which they announced a substantial increase of journals in the social sciences indexed in Web of Science.
Track back a little. In the November/December issue of the Searcher Magazine was an interview of Herther with Keith MacGregor and James Testa of Thomson Scientific. The interview closed with the following question:
If, by some chance, next year there were suddenly 500 new journals that met the criteria for acceptance in Web of Science, would you add 500 new journals to the databases?
Testa: Well, this is a hypothetical question, so the hypothetical answer would be yes. If these were journals that met our criteria, we would absolutely add these. I don’t see how we could say no. I’d be surprised to see that happen, but, yes we would certainly accept them.
In the interview Testa indicated that the normal pace of growth for Web of Science is in the order of 100-200 journals per year. The announced 162 regional social science journals which have been added to Web of Science are thus to be considered as part of those hypothetical journals. The newly identified collection contains journals that typically target a regional rather than international audience by approaching subjects from a local perspective or focusing on particular topics of regional interest. They include 49 titles from the Asia-Pacific region and 91 from the European Union.
What’s left on my wishlist is only a complete title list of those journals that have been added. Now we have to guess to the additions. in this respect Thomson behaves like the “Guide de Michelin” you have to figure it out for yourself which restraunts dropped a star or gained one.
reference
Herther, N. K. (2007). Thomson Scientific and the citation indexes : an interview with Keith MacGregor and James Testa. Searcher 15(10): 8-17.
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